October arrives gently, leading me into autumn

with pale mornings and colder air. A scarf of fog ribbons

along the canal. The water reflects white, white.

It’s OK, the trees are telling me.  It’s OK.

We know you’re hurting.  We see your pain, hanging

sharp above you like spikes on hawthorn.  You can

feel what you feel.  But while you wear your grief,

while you wrap it around yourself, you might look too

at the shaking of berries on the path – red

and orange like the wide star of a maple leaf.

You can allow yourself a moment of wonder

at the gathering of enormous scarlet toadstools

in the woods.  It’s like fairyland a man says to me,

having been enough surprised to dismount his bike. 

The skies are grey, certainly, and there’s a chill

in the air.  The colours of autumn won’t change

the fact of her death, and everything won’t be alright.

But the trees will still shed their red and their gold,

and they will stand bare against winter frost, as

they do every year.  It isn’t necessary to take a

lesson from this.  It’s enough just to be here

on this cold morning; awake, alone, alive.